Actors, left to right, Keira Loughran, Eli Ham and Tara Beagan, in scene from photo call at Saskatoon Native Theatre Company for The Hours That Remain.
Photograph by: Greg Pender , The StarPhoenix
Less than two days after arriving from Toronto, she knew she was in the right place.
"It feels like an honour to be here," Tara Beagan said this week. "It just feels like potential and excitement."
Beagan is part of The Hours That Remain, a play about missing aboriginal women. She plays Denise, who is haunted by her sister Michelle's disappearance.
The play was rehearsed in Toronto and will premiere in Saskatoon before returning to Toronto for another run.
The location of Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company's playing space, in the production facility built by La Troupe du Jour on 20th Street, makes the play even more "unfortunately relevant," Beagan said.
"It feels like the right neighbourhood to be in."
One of the first things she did was take a walk with SNTC artistic director Curtis Peeteetuce, who seems to know everybody.
"He's like the mayor of Saskatoon," she laughed.
Beagan is a playwright, actor and artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. Of Nlaka-pamux and Irish-Canadian roots, she grew up in Leth-bridge but spent summers on the Coldwater Reserve in Merritt, B.C.
Beagan got hooked on acting by "being in a play in Grade 2 and knowing it was the best play ever."
That was Sleeping Beauty, and Beagan had the best part - the Witch.
Beagan's theatrical path eventually led to playwriting, which she's devoted herself to for the past several years. But playwright Keith Barker's script got her back on stage.
Barker, who is Metis, wrote the play in reaction to the Highway of Tears, the stretch of the Yellow-head between Prince Rupert and Prince George where so many women have been murdered or have disappeared from.
"It shattered a lot for him and from that destruction came creation."
In the play, Denise is visited by Michelle's spirit (Keira Loughran) while her preoccupation damages her marriage to Daniel (Eli Ham). David Storch directs.
"The earth has fallen out from under her feet," Beagan said. "I have a big sister so it speaks to me in a big way."
The play might be a tough sell because it touches on our collective guilt, Beagan said. But its aim is to create an experience of community.
"At the core of us as humans," she said, "we are hungry for great stories, and this one is."
THE HOURS THAT REMAIN
By Keith Barker Presented by SNTC Oct. 4 to 14 Studio 914, 914 20th St. W.
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